New Autopsy Finds Fla. Teen Was Suffocated
 

I knew it. Great work protesters.


TAMPA, Fla. - A 14-year-old boy beaten by guards at a juvenile boot camp died because the guards suffocated him, a medical examiner said Friday.

The findings of the second autopsy on Martin Lee Anderson conflict with the initial ruling from a different medical examiner that the boy died from complications of sickle cell trait, a usually benign blood disorder.

"Martin Anderson's death was caused by suffocation due to actions of the guards at the boot camp," said Dr. Vernard Adams, who conducted the second autopsy. The boy's body was exhumed after a camp surveillance videotape surfaced showing the guards beating him the day before he died.

Adams said the suffocation was caused by hands blocking the boy's mouth, as well as the "forced inhalation of ammonia fumes" that caused his vocal cords to spasm, blocking his upper airway.

The videotape shows Anderson being kneed, struck and dragged by guards on his first day at the Bay County Sheriff's boot camp for juvenile offenders. He was eventually taken to a Pensacola hospital, where he died a few hours later, on Jan. 6.

No one has been arrested in connection with the death, which sparked protests at the state Capitol, forced lawmakers to scrap the military-style camps and led to the resignation of the state's top law enforcement officer.

Gov.Jeb Bush also ordered an investigation after Anderson's family questioned the finding by Bay County Medical Examiner Charles Siebert that sickle cell trait was to blame for the boy's death. Bush appointed Hillsborough County State Attorney Mark Ober to lead the investigation, and Ober ordered the second autopsy.

A forensic pathologist hired by Anderson's family observed the second autopsy, Dr. Michael Baden, said afterward that he believed Anderson didn't die from natural causes.

Siebert had ruled that physical exertion had triggered sickle cell trait and ultimately caused small blood clots to develop in Anderson's bloodstream, which resulted in internal bleeding.

Anderson had collapsed while doing push-ups, sit-ups, running laps and other exercises that were part of his admission process at the camp. He had been sent there for violating probation by trespassing at a school after he and his cousins were charged with stealing their grandmother's car from a church parking lot.:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

What I find very interesting is how did it get so bad so very fast...

1) The boy had a sickle cell trait that exacerbates many problems when under duress.

2) Who knows what sickle cell does to folks neurologically? Something does happened. I don't know exactly what happens. But the boy may have been "acting out" uncontrollably because of his untreated trait, which means he needed better psychologically care, not a boot camp mentality.

3) Those who are untrained in detention or restraint techniques and are not certified healthcare providers should not be forcing any child under duress, then compounding the effect due by adding ammonia to revive a child. It's one thing for an adult. It's another for an developing adolescent...

This whole thing is just jacked up... And I dunno my 1992 LA riot mind is back on... I have a bad feeling about this...

Sickle cell trait is not the same as having the disease and I think that is where folks are getting this case all mixed up. Just because you have the trait does not mean you feel any symptoms. If you produce a child and you and your mate have the trait then your child will have the disease. You can be a carrier of the trait and have not problems, due to distress or not. The issue is that they used excess force and continued to do so when the 14 year old's body went limp. Were you able to see the video. The nurse even watched as it happend.

Right. Sickle cell trait is nothing. Everybody and their mothers have that. SST manifests physically, neurologically, or otherwise, in no way whatsoever. Anemia is a problem, additionally, under intense, stressful conditions, exhaustion and low oxygen could occur. However, I think it's important to keep in mind that this young man was an athlete and so for his sickle cell trait to suddenly start "acting up" because he was running some laps, I think is nuts.

I heard the first person who performed the autopsy say that if the guards did in fact kill this boy that he was lying when he said that he was out of breath in the first place and that he doesn't believe that he was faking. My answer to that is so what if he was faking...imagine that initially he was. A 14 year old boy lying about being tired doing strenuous exercises, etc. So! That's still no excuse to beat the shit out of him until he was unconscious.

I have a 13 year old sone and I can only imagine what this mother is going through. He was a CHILD!!!

As a Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics I am well aware of human hemaglobinapathies. One of which is Sickle Cell where the is a rearrangement of beta-globin gene locus with various haplotypes.

One of the many problems with human Beta-globinapathies are the haploinsufficiencies. That is what they mean by carriers of the the trait. Since the beta-globin gene locus is one of the largest ones and there is a switching of several exons during the development, at any point there could be problems that obtaining a fully functional hemaglobin as someone that may just carry the trait reaches puberty.

When scientists and medical doctor's say stress, it means, that when there is low oxygen tension in the lungs that causes the increases in blood pressure, hyperventilation, and perceived "flight or fight" responses that are activated under the parasympathetic nervous system. Since hemaglobin is an intricate part of that process and blood is rapidly moving everywhere to create some kind of response in the body, through the action of hormones, including thyroid and insulin, red blood cell sickling, because of an incomplete protein due to haploinsufficiency or compound heterozygosity can exacerbate a response with someone that merely carries the trait...

Moreover, there are other environmental external factors, aside from the hitting by personnel, such as substance abuse, or poor nutrition, that could make someone that carries the sickle cell trait more prone to certain pathologies: i.e. increased tumorigenesis, aneurysm [sp?] and stroke. How a thallesemia could cause all of these secondary chronic diseases are under intense investigation.

And what you have here is a developing adolescent with raging hormones and the personnel could care less of his medical condition. Already, that speaks volumes to the neurological conditions he has yet to fully manifest, if he develops them appropriately at all...

Wow a lot of technical terms AKA_Monet. You go girl. What it boils down to is that the boy died of suffocation. He also had ammonia pellets or something shoved up his nose-they actually used this as a form of punishment for these children. Needless to say, he was murdered, and the reason-excessive force used by the officers. I think we are both saying the same thing though, just in a different manner.

"The guards had said in an incident report that they used ammonia capsules to keep Anderson conscious."
update

One of the first things folks learn in Organic Chemistry is oxygen--especially that bound to Hemogloblin is a good leaving group especially when adding ammonia (NH3 or amide).

And adding ammonia to the nose to "revive or keep consious", means that it surpasses the blood-brain barrier. No telling what the sickle cell trait or misfolded hemoglobin with several polymorphisms does at the neurological level...

I say all of this to say that there are VERY FEW RESEARCHERS that study at this level of detail.

Yes, the boy suffocated, but it was precipitated very rapidly due to this boy's adolescence and medical condition. Either way, the personnel should have never added ammonia to someone known to be carrying the sickle cell trait.

Moreover, there is an increase incidence of cancer in those who carry the sickle cell trait. That has been proven. All cancers... It is called angiogenesis and sickle cell exacerbates the problem even when carrying just the trait.

How does sickle cell cause the anemia? I know how it does, but I want to see what your thinking is...

Because these things are not as black and white as we want to make them out.

Sickle cell "trait" is still a haploinsufficiency disease. Missing one of the beta-globin alleles or being a compound heterozygote, still manifests as sickle cell anemia when under medical stress conditions.

Who knows what this boy exactly was genotypically. He carried the sickle cell trait, meaning he did not have a fully functional beta-globin gene product.

To me that immediately spells disaster in whole organ function from heart disease to cancer because blood is consider an organ system, too. Without blood flowing throughout the body system properly, the organ failure is relatively high.

As I understand it, they made the boy exhausted with doing exercises that he was unable to do. That already means his physiological sympathetic nervous system was on full drive. His response was exhaustion to slow his roll. He was too young to articulate his problems to the personnel so they immediately thought he was faking it. Then the personnel attacked him and he eventually, he succumbed to unconsiousness.

Those are the differentials I can come up with from my vantage point, however, I am not a physician. But I do know how these gene product interactions can make fail to cause organ failure, particular that in the heart. That is where most of my grant funding comes from NIH...

Wow so in your professional opinion would you say that this was murder or and accident? And thanks for the clarity. I would have never known that the trait has that effect on people. I have a friend with the trait and she is healthy and has had not problems. On a different note, there still hasn't been any arrests made. Do you believe the force was excessive? I saw the tape and the boy look unconscious or limp when they first began to beat and gather around him.

I am not a lawyer so you have to ask the "lawyer sorors". But if I was one of the folks for the prosecution, straight up premeditated murder? No. Involuntary manslaughter, possibly...

An accident? Did the personnel know the boy had the Sickle Cell Trait--like was it in his medical record. It sounds like it was... So to me, if I was on a jury, which I probably wouldn't be because of my expertise, then I would say it was NOT an accident because the boy had it in his chart. Because the personnel used excessive force on a known Sickle Cell Trait boy, that to mean would mean they killed that child. Because I am not a lawyer, I don't know the difference between the legal definitions of "accidental death", "involuntary manslaughter" or "negligent homicide". But I would definitely say it was malpractice like they do to physicians...

The issue from my perspective is that the legal community is behind the medical forensics biotech community in some aspects. It will take acts of Congress when new technologies arise to keep the legal community upto speed...

My stance, force was too excessive on an adolescent boy that has the sickle cell trait... Period... Too many unknowns occurred and one will NEVER know if it was due to insufficiency of fully functional hemaglobin or not.

As far as your friend, she will probably live a fairly decent life without many issues any different from other people. If she is part of the health disparity community, then her problems will be similar to others with the additive effect of the trait compounding the issue.

The key is to get informed and come in walking into the door while at the physician's office with monitored NOTES. 9 times out of 10 the physicians will write it off, but that is where we need the "political forces" to make our case known about the medical relevancy and advocacy of sickle cell anemia.

Sure, I can find some tidbits and caveats about the molecular mechanisms and basis of sickle cell disease. How sickle call haploinsufficiency causes whole organ failure, etc. And I probably can get some funding for it. But if the US President or Congress does not see the significance to studying this illness, then why should the public???

Why do so many African Americans still have hypertension (high blood pressure)? Does it have ANYTHING to do with sickle cell trait, Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms, etc.? I know NOBODY studies that right now... NADA... And guess what, NOBODY give a rat's ass about it...

Okey, like maybe 2 dozen researchers worldwide... Most of them in Africa who have zero funding opportunities.

I agree, but in my opinion the force would have been excessive to a healthy child. I have a friend who works in a youth correctional facility and they have never be able to touch the inmates and they are inmates. This was a boot camp. I just think the whole ordeal was criminal.

That's where the legal community has not caught up with the medical/biotech/forensics community...

Any force is excessive on a child, healthy or not... Most force is excessive on adults, healthy or not.

But from my perspective, how does one keep criminals in line without that force?

I think technology will improve when human force or contact will be minimal. They already have tasers, there will be other technology in the future.

However more needs to be done on how populations or groups of people will react to that force. Individually, there is enough variation in the genetic make-up of someone that no one is identical with the exception of identical twins--which even then, they are finding differences... But collectively, within a population, there are similarities that can be measured and quantified generally how one reacts to something.

Even clones of things can be different in some aspects, such is the case for epigenetics...

How much is too much. Adult or child. Rodney King and Regonald Denning were prime examples of that.

Being that I lived in SoCal at the time of the LA Riots then I am very familiar with the situation.

My perspective and from what I remember and not as a physician:

King was overweight when he got beatdown... So were some of the police that beat him down. But King, himself looked unhealthy due to his obesity and he wasn't fit. Did that merit that the cops should have used other techniques to subdue him in a "suspected crime"? I don't know? But most folks will say that the issue was at that time do those who represent the government (in uniform) having the "right" to apprehend a "suspect" that is giving them "trouble" in that manner? They sure did not do that to OJ and what OJ got accused of was worse...

Reginald Denny, looked like he did way too much Crystal Meth and toked up on his pipe most of the day... He got beatdown by gang members who used brute force--no batons and if they did, they would have killed him.

Both perspns were beatdown by too much force. But because they were ~relatively younger men, under the age of 50; had normal height and were not overtly sick or malnourished, then as adult males, they were able to withstand the force levied against them.

Most of these "torture studies" were done on Caucasian men by folks like the Nazi's with detailed sketches of what exactly would happen before one dies ~50-80 years ago. Barely anything was known about hormones, development, genetics and the predisposition to certain diseases.

Moreover, now there are more lethal forces, like poisons, gases and germ warfare, as well as weaponry and some restraint techniques that include some level of martial arts positions... If one presses a certain pressure point in some people it could kill them or make them go to sleep...

But one ought not do that to folks they do not know every detail about their physiology, because you NEVER know what will happen with the "thread of life". It is very fragile at times...

The issue is force not the person's health. I think that sometimes things are taken over board with trying to retrain a person and clearly in the videotape the young man did not appear to be resisting or resilient. He looked exhausted and feeble. Whether a person can withstand a hit or not, should excessive force be used and if so how much is too much? I don't think a lot of police officers ask themselves that question. They just feel they are in control and act on their misconceptions about the accused or anger toward whatever crime that may have been committed. Don't get me wrong, I believe the punishable should be punished but let the punishment fit the crime and no one that violates traffic should be beat down or that steals a car should be killed.

Boot camp ex-guards, nurse charged in boy's death
 

POSTED: 11:49 a.m. EST, November 28, 2006

PENSACOLA, Florida (AP) -- Seven former guards and a nurse at a military-style boot camp for juvenile offenders were charged with aggravated manslaughter in the death of a teenage boy whose rough handling by the guards was videotaped, a special prosecutor said Tuesday.

The announcement by Hillsborough County State Attorney Mark Ober comes almost 11 months after Martin Lee Anderson, 14, collapsed in the exercise yard at the Bay County sheriff's camp in Panama City.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/11/28/bo....ap/index.html

Praise God,

They were going to just think that they could cover up murdering that boy. Thanks for the update, I was wondering what was going on with that case.

IF the child had indeed collapsed on prior occasions during exercises, then the administration should have been put on notice right then that he had a medical condition and that the condition required further investigation. They should have educated themselves about the various issues noted by AKA_Monet and spoken with their attorney about the risk(s) of keeping the boy at this kind of facility. All other personnel should have immediately been put on notice of how NOT to handle this child (i.e. stuffing capsules up his nose, covering his mouth, beating the hell out of him, etc). He probably should have been removed from the population until further notice. I still can't get over the fact that the nurse just stood there. :mad: That is what gets me most of all. :mad:

Yeah I know me too. But justice will prevail. I think the thing that made me the maddest was the simple fact that they tried to pass this off as some genetic disorder that he had and that was why he died of natural causes-yeah right!